The Secret Clan: The Complete Series

by Amanda Scott

  Determined to recall the earl to the present, Anne said, “What must I do?”

  “You must not stay here,” he said, his voice losing strength again.

  “But I thought…” She hesitated, reluctant to admit that she knew, or thought she knew, how things would be left.

  “Ellyson Towers will be yours in two years, Anne, when you reach twenty-one. In the meantime you’ll have an adequate allowance from the rents, even with England’s wretched Harry wreaking mischief wherever he can.”

  She nodded, for she had learned as much from her mother before the countess’s death. Blinking back tears at that unhappy memory, she forced herself to concentrate on her father’s words, for his voice had weakened again, frighteningly.

  “Scott will write to inform Thomas…”

  “Thomas Ellyson?”

  “Aye. He is the heir now to my titles and the Armadale estates in Stirlingshire.” He drew a rasping breath. “Still, the inheritance will surprise him.”

  “But surely you wrote to him when Andrew died.”

  “Och, aye, but he did not bother even to reply, doubtless believing I still had plenty of time left to produce an army of sons. You must write to him, lass. ’Tis the proper thing to do, for he will be head of the family when I’m gone.”

  “He won’t expect to look after me, will he?” Anne asked. She remembered their distant cousin Thomas Ellyson fondly from her childhood and the one or two occasions when he had paid them a visit, but the thought that a near stranger might call the tune for her dancing did not appeal to her.

  The earl’s parched lips twitched slightly. “You are to do as I bid you, lass.”

  “Aye, sir, but I’d prefer to remain here.”

  “Nay, you must not, for we lie only three miles from the line and English Harry’s troops. Our own King Jamie’s nobles are gathering armies nearby too, to support him, and there be little to choose betwixt one fighting man and another where an unprotected lass is concerned. Don’t count on Jamie to protect you, either. For one thing, he is not here. Moreover, he has troubles enough, just trying to determine from one day to the next who is with him and who is against him.”

  “But I—”

  “It’s settled,” he said. “You’ll go to your aunt Olivia at Mute Hill House.”

  “Mute Hill House?” Anne scarcely remembered the place, for her aunt Olivia, Lady Carmichael, and Armadale were not close, and Anne had not visited Mute Hill House since her early childhood.

  “It won’t be bad,” the earl said. “You will be only ten miles from home. Moreover, the house is large and well fortified, so you’ll be comfortable and safe. You can help support your aunt’s spirits, too, for she will pretend to miss me, especially since she plunged herself into grief after her husband died two years ago and apparently refuses to emerge from it. She’s a tiresome woman, but you may find a friend in your cousin, for although you are older, you have much in common, including the fact that you were both named Fiona Anne after my mother.”

  “But I—”

  “It’s settled,” he growled. “You’ll go to Olivia.”

  Anne sighed but nodded, saying, “At least living at Mute Hill will be better than traveling all the way to Stirlingshire to abide with Cousin Thomas.”

  “If Thomas Ellyson has married, he has not had the courtesy to inform me,” the earl said with a hint of his customary testiness. “And if he has no wife, although he is years older than you, it would be most inappropriate for you to live with him.”

  “I suppose it would.”

  “I warrant you’ll not stay long with Olivia in any event, lass. After all, with the Towers and your mother’s fortune, plus what more I shall leave you—which includes your little sisters’ portions now, as well as your own—you will be a wealthy woman even if English Harry does take the Borders—or takes all Scotland, for that matter—so you will doubtless marry well.”

  “If that is true, sir, I cannot imagine how you have failed me.”

  “My dear child, you are nearly nineteen years old! You should have married long since, but what I meant to say is that your aunt Olivia will most likely see to that business quite easily. She’s a fool and thinks too much about herself, but she did manage to get that lass of hers betrothed to Sir Christopher Chisholm of Ashkirk and Torness, which was no mean feat. Indeed, I should think—”

  But what he thought she would never know, for his words ended in a gasping cough as his voice and frail body failed him at last. His eyes widened, a sharp spasm wracked his body, and a moment later, his eyes closed.

  Anne heard one last rattling breath, and then he was gone.

  A wave of desolation swept over her. In less than a year—no, in barely a fortnight—she had gone from being a member of a happy, vigorous family to being alone in the world. And although she disapproved of her father’s arbitrary disposal of her future, it was his right to command her and her duty to obey. In any event, she knew she lacked the fortitude to defy his wishes, even now.

  As soon as he was buried in the little cemetery just outside the castle walls, she would pack her things and go to Mute Hill House.

  Chapter 1

  Six weeks later

  Twenty-eight-year-old Kit Chisholm swallowed hard as he and his two silent companions reached the top of a hill pass a few miles southeast of Moffat and a salty tang in the soft Border breeze brought a rush of memory and stirred a familiar longing in his soul. The three had left Lanark early that morning, the first sunny morning in a sennight, and had already endured eight hours in the saddle, following four equally long, wet and dreary days before this one, journeying south from the Highlands. They were tired, but all three were Border bred, and Kit knew that Tam and Willie must be feeling much as he did.

  Before them, beyond the wide, low-lying forest of Eskdale, lay the homeland of his childhood, the steep, rolling hills and deeply cleft river valleys of Roxburghshire. There, wandering mountain streams divided thick woodlands from occasional patches of arable land as their waters rushed to spill into the greater flow of the Teviot, the Ewes, the Liddel, and other powerful rivers of their ilk.

  The deep, aching homesickness that his memories stirred seemed only to strengthen with the knowledge that he was almost home again. Six long years had passed since the angry day he had left Hawks Rig Castle for the Highlands, when he had declared that he would never be homesick. But he had been wrong. Indeed, the feeling now was as strong as it had been during the fifteen months he had spent as a prisoner aboard the Marion Ogilvy, a time he remembered as endless, lonely months of helpless, often seething rage punctuated by periods of uncharacteristic despair.

  Now that he was nearly home, it seemed to him that his yearning to be there should be easing a bit. Perhaps, he mused, it was simply safe now to acknowledge the homesickness and recognize how deeply it had affected him. Perhaps, too, he had simply grown up.

  He had no idea what lay ahead. His father, the late Laird of Ashkirk and Torness, had died during his absence, so the estates and Hawks Rig were Kit’s now, but the first thing he had felt at hearing the news had been fury, fury with the old laird for dying before they could reconcile their differences, and fury with himself for not growing up sooner.

  “How far would ye say Hawks Rig lies from here?” young Willie Armstrong asked him, breaking the long silence.

  Kit frowned. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “Ten miles or so if we could fly, but since we must ride, I’d say a half-day’s journey. But ’tis only an hour and a bit from here to Dunsithe.”

  “That’s good, that is,” the older, stockier Tam said in his deep, gravelly voice. “I’ll be glad tae slip off this saddle for a good night’s rest.”

  “I wonder what they’ll think of our news,” Kit said, smiling at last.

  Near Dunsithe Castle

  “Riders!” Twelve-year-old Wee Jock o’ the Wall raced barefoot across the damp, grassy hillside, shouting, “Riders approaching the castle, laird!”

  Wild Fin Mackenz
ie, Laird of Kintail, and his constable and best friend since childhood, Sir Patrick MacRae, both turned in their saddles. They had taken advantage of the first dry day after a sennight of intermittent rain to go hawking.

  Kintail yelled, “How many, Jock?”

  “Three o’ them,” the boy yelled back. “Ye can see for yourself an ye look beyond them trees yonder.”

  “Go ahead, Fin,” Patrick said. “I’ll call Zeus in and be right behind you. Whistle up the dogs, Jock.”

  “Aye, sir,” Jock replied, putting two fingers in his mouth and producing an ear-splitting shriek to which the three spaniels responded with tongues lolling and tails awag. The giant deerhound, Thunder, loped after them, showing far more dignity but soon outpacing the smaller dogs to catch up with his young master.

  Patrick whistled the goshawk’s recall signal, whereupon the great bird raised its wings and swooped toward him from the high branch where it had perched to survey nearby fields for its next unsuspecting prey. When the bird’s talons met Patrick’s leather glove, he caught its jesses and gave it a quail’s wing. As Zeus tore flesh from bone, Patrick spurred his horse and caught up with Kintail.

  “Three, just as the lad said,” Kintail told him. “They carry no banner.”

  Since Patrick’s distance vision was nearly as keen as the hawk’s, he had already noted the lack of a banner, and other details as well.

  “Faith,” he muttered. “My eyes must be deceiving me.”

  “They rarely do,” Kintail said, “but what makes you say so?”

  “Because if they do not, we’re about to offer hospitality to a dead man.”

  When Dunsithe Castle came into view at last, squatting solidly atop the highest hill in the area, its gray square towers and rounded turrets outlined starkly against the clear blue sky, Kit pointed it out to his companions.

  “ ’Tis a fine looking place, that,” Willie Armstrong observed. “Wonder how many kine they run in the hills hereabouts.”

  “You will stifle that reiver’s soul of yours whilst we’re here, lad,” Kit ordered bluntly. “Besides being my friend, Kintail is a bad man to cross, and his constable, Sir Patrick MacRae, can take down a stag at four hundred yards with a single shot from his longbow.”

  Widening his blue eyes, Willie said, “I’d never lift beasts belonging tae anyone ye speak for, Kit. Ye should ken better nor that, should he no, Tam?”

  The older man merely grunted.

  Indignantly, Willie said, “D’ye think I’d lift beasts from a friend, Tam?”

  “In sooth, lad, I think ye’d lift the featherbed from under your own mother, did a more lucrative use for it occur tae ye,” Tam said.

  Kit chuckled, and although Willie cast him a darkling look, the lad wisely let the subject drop.

  “Someone ha’ seen us,” Tam said.

  “Aye,” Kit agreed, already watching the two men riding toward them.

  The two of them, despite being Highlanders as tall and broad-shouldered as he was, rode like Borderers bred to the saddle. One carried a large hawk on his fist, and the bird lifted its wings now and again, not in protest but as if it simply enjoyed the sensation of wind beneath its wings.

  Smiling, Kit said, “You are about to meet our host and his constable.” He drew rein and waited patiently for Kintail and Patrick to close with them. As they did, he noted a lad and four dogs racing uphill toward the castle.

  Tam had seen them, too. “Likely, we’ll soon ha’ a host of armed men descending on us,” he said grimly.

  “More likely, the servants will be setting extra places for supper,” Kit said.

  “That’s no so likely as spears and arrows,” Tam said, “for they can scarcely ha’ seen who we are yet. Mayhap if they be friends o’ yours—”

  “They know who we are,” Kit said, raising a hand to return a similar greeting from Patrick.

  “How could they?” Willie demanded.

  “Sir Patrick’s long vision is even keener than mine.”

  Nodding, Willie said, “Aye then, I’ll believe ye. On the ship, ye always could make out sail or landfall long afore the rest of us could.”

  Tam looked narrowly at Kit. “I ha’ seen ye wi’ a sword in your hand but no wi’ a bow. Still, wi’ that long sight o’ yours, I expect ye’ve a fine eye for a target.”

  “Sir Patrick is more skilled, but I can give him fair competition.”

  “From what we ha’ seen hereabouts and in the Highlands, I’d wager ye might soon ha’ the chance tae show your skill,” Tam said. “They say Henry’s army lies ready tae attack somewhere between the line and the English city o’ York.”

  The approaching riders had slowed and were waving them forward.

  “Come on,” Kit said, spurring his mount.

  He laughed with boyish delight when Kintail clapped him on the shoulder and Patrick cried, “Kit Chisholm, by all that’s holy, we thought you were dead!”

  “I nearly was, I can tell you,” Kit said. “I spent fifteen long months in hell, at all events. These are my lads, Tam and Willie,” he added before Kintail or Patrick could demand further explanation of his absence.

  The men shook hands all around, and then Kit said, “Whatever gave you the notion that I was dead? ’Tis true I was out of the country for longer than I’d have wished, but as I’d been in the Highlands four years and more before then—”

  “Faith, is that how it was?” Patrick demanded, his eyes narrowing. “I heard what happened before you disappeared, you know. Fin knows, too, although I hope I don’t have to tell you we didn’t believe a word of what they said of you.” He glanced at Tam and Willie, then back at Kit, raising his eyebrows as he did.

  Easily following his thoughts, Kit said, “They know more about the murders than you do, so we can talk freely.” For Tam and Willie’s sake, he added, “I’ve known these two since my schooldays. You can trust them as you do me.”

  Kintail said, “Then we may assume the matter was settled sensibly and the authorities know now that the charges against you were false.”

  “You may,” Kit said, sobering.

  “But how did you manage to disappear for over a year?” Patrick asked.

  “For that I can thank the Sheriff of Inverness. His men assumed I had committed two murders, but they feared a jury might disagree with them, so they simply arrested me and handed me over to one of Cardinal Beaton’s ship captains as a convicted criminal. My protests of innocence and the fact that I had never had a trial being utterly ignored, I served as the cardinal’s involuntary seaman for fifteen months before Tam, Willie, and I escaped and I was able to prove my innocence.”

  Patrick looked curiously at Tam and Willie, as if he would have liked to ask what crimes they had committed, but then, visibly collecting himself, he said to Kit, “I’m glad you were cleared, but like it or not, my lad, the official position is that you are as dead as our last Christmas goose.”

  “Dead!” When Patrick nodded, Kit added, “The official position? But how can that be when anyone can see that I’m alive?”

  Raising a hand to stop Patrick’s explanation before it began, Kintail said, “Shall we ride on to Dunsithe to discuss this? You’ll stay the night at least, Kit. Molly and Beth will both want to meet you and hear any news you’ve brought.”

  “Molly and Beth?”

  “Our wives, of course,” Patrick said, adding as his eyes lit with pride, “They are both presently in a delicate condition, so mind how you behave.”

  “My congratulations to you both,” Kit said. “I do bring news, too, particularly from your sister and mother, Patrick.”

  Clearly surprised, Patrick said warily, “How do they fare?”

  “Excellently,” Kit replied. “As a matter of fact, your sister recently married my cousin, Alex Chisholm.”

  Patrick’s jaw dropped. “Why have I heard nothing of this?” he demanded.

  Kit chuckled. “I expect Bab wanted to punish you,” he said.

  “He can tell you all about it o
n the way,” Kintail said sternly. “By now our lads are lining the ramparts, trying to decide if all is well, and if we do not return soon, our wives will be riding out to join us.”

  Accordingly, as they rode up the hill to Dunsithe, Kit described what he knew of Barbara MacRae’s marriage to Sir Alex Chisholm.

  “So it was all my mother’s doing,” Patrick said when Kit reached the end of his tale. “How astonishing!”

  “You may say so, but you helped,” Kit said, grinning. “From what I heard, you had suggested the match often enough to make it seem unnecessary to apply for your permission.”

  They continued to discuss the wedding and other news of the Highlands until they rode through the open gates into Dunsithe’s cobbled courtyard.

  Two young women, both beautiful and bearing a strong likeness to each other, came hurrying to meet them.

  “We thought you would never come back,” the elder one said accusingly to Kintail. She had clouds of red-gold curls hanging nearly to her hips, and when he leaped down to gather her into his arms, Kit easily deduced that she was his wife.

  The other woman, despite the strong resemblance, had smooth, silvery blond hair and an air of serenity that Kintail’s wife lacked. She waited patiently while Patrick handed the hawk to a waiting gilly and dismounted, but then she walked into his embrace, returning it with fervor. Both women were visibly pregnant.

  Introducing them as Molly and Beth, Kintail added as Kit dismounted, “This gentleman is Sir Christopher Chisholm, Laird of Ashkirk and Torness.”

  Molly frowned. “But did we not hear that… that is…”

  When she hesitated again, Patrick said with a chuckle, “Aye, Kit’s dead. I informed him of his demise only moments ago, however. He did not know.”

  Kit said to Kintail, “Perhaps we should postpone the rest of this conversation until after we eat, when we can speak more privately.”

  Molly Mackenzie cast her husband a silent but speaking look.